IO15 Keynote

Setting the Stage - IO15 Keynote

We walked into a room with a wraparound display around three-quarters of the large room on the third floor of Moscone, that was showing a slick looking wallpaper with floating graphs, and ones and zeros. The wallpaper animation was interrupted for a few games of pong played from end to end on what must be a five hundred foot long display. From there, we saw a Rube Goldburg running on the screen, where they took advantage of the fact that it had been filmed, and took sections in slow motion. The music was building up to what we assumed would be a massive payoff, but then near the end, the screen filled with water, and a giant whale swam across the screen. More pong, and floating ones and zeros, and waiting for things to get started. The Pong finals ended in a tie. Now we’re flying through the galaxy, floating past asteroids that appear to be way too close together. Earth shows up and fades out to applause, then we are transitioned into a countdown that starts from 60, counts down to 7, at which point we see a reddit alien and twitter birds, uber cars in an animation that looks like it belongs as the intro to Silicon Valley. This part of the animation features a red dot in the starring role. I wonder how much 7-up paid for this promotional spot? The red dot fixes the countdown and then fireworks.

9:41am - Start Time

Sundar walks onto stage. He’s trying to weave a consistent story around all of Google’s core technologies. I’m not sure how true it is, but it makes for a nice story.

Quick rundown of platforms that we’ll be touching on:

  • Android
  • Android Wear
  • Android Auto
  • Android TV
  • Chromecast
  • Android M Developer Preview

HBO Now announced for Google Play, Silicon Valley gets a mention! Yay!

Android M Developer Preview

9:49am

App Permissions

Customize and control, app permissions. App permssions changing to the iOS paradigm, WhatsApp used. No permissions up front, first time use, microphone permissions comes up. Permissions may be revoked. Only applies to apps targeted at M. No auto-update blocking on new permissions. This is huge.

Mobile Web

Providing content in WebViews kind of sucks. Chrome Custom Tabs are the solution. Chrome browser running with branded UI features when linked from an app, creates a seamless experience. Pre-fetching content. Leverage all of Chrome’s goodies. Q3.

Verify that the app owns the links that it claims. No more disambiguation dialog, because the platform can verify those links.

Mobile Payments

Android Pay, what about Wallet? Works with any Android device with NFC. Works at any retailers that accept touchless payments (does that mean all Apple Pay providers?). Also in-app.

  • Simplicity
  • Security
  • Choice

KitKat forward.

Fingerprint Support

Built-in fingerprint support in Android M with a standard API. Works with Android Pay. Can be used to unlock, or do in-app purchases. Open APIs. Nexus 6 support???

Power & Charging

Smarter power management with Doze. Uses motion detection to exponentially back-off network activity to extend battery life on devices that are lightly used, or left on the table for most of th day. Still allows high-priority chat messages through. Up to 2x battery life on Nexus 9.

3-5x faster charging with USB C, which sounds like it’s going to be the new standard. Working with OEMs.

Word Selection

Word chunking in selection.

Easier sharing

Direct share, remembers who/what you share with most frequently to surface intelligently.

Simplified Volume Controls

All audio streams available from one thing.

M image

10:06am

Contains lots of keywords.

Android Wear

10:06am

Over 1500 watchfaces! Yay!

Key platform investments. Most recent release (already announced) includes:

  • ALways-on Apps
  • Wifi
  • New Launcher
  • Emoji recognizer
  • Wrist gestures
  • Maps API
  • Screen Lock

Key principles:

  • Glanceable
  • Actionable
  • Effortless

Always-on apps

Shopping list example, which is great, since I’ve hit this use case. Previous version kept the screen at full on brightness if you wanted your list up. Claim that it’s battery friendly, we’ll see.

Wrist gestures

Scroll through lists or Now Cards when hands are full, using gestures.

Emoji

Draw an emoji, get a list to pick from.

Uber

Uber is coming! “Call a car”, now can call an Uber, and watch the car coming with the always-on screen.

Fit

Can recognize squats, pushups and situps.

Spotify

Browse music on the watch.

Apps

4,000 specifically targeting Android Wear.

IoT/Brillo

10:15am

Sundar’s back on stage. Talking IoT/Home.

Want to connect everything.

Home

Smart blinds. Smart potted plant.

Agriculture

Smart Grass. Smart dirt.

Transportation

Smart bus drivers.

Problems

OEMs not sure how to build coherent platforms.

Nest

Division that’s going to solve this problem is Nest.

  • User Experience
  • Communications
  • Operating System

Brillo

10:17am

Operating system for IoT. I’m sure I’ll be saying that word a lot over the summer.

  • Derived from Android
  • Minimal system requirements
  • Broad silicon support
  • Easy to secure

Q3 Developer Preview

Weave

10:19am

  • Developer APIs
  • Cross Platform

Messaging layer for communicating between smart devices. Looks like JSON, though I’m sure it’s going to be a low-level binary format. Standardized schemas, custom schemas will be able to be submitted for approval.

Q4 2015 Full Stack.

Mobile Search and Google Now

10:22am

  • Natural Language Processing
  • Image Recognition
  • Translation
  • Machine Learning

Deep Neural Nets

10:23am

Word error rate from 23% -> 8%.

Google Now

More contextual. Why can’t your smartphone be smarter? Where did I park my car?

  • Context
  • Answers (proactively)
  • Action

Context

Different contexts means different information is useful. Being at Disney World vs sitting on your couch.

Understanding pronouns, through context awareness:

  • “It”
  • “There”
  • “That”
  • “They”

Answers

Knowledge graph. 1B entities in the knowledge graph.

Action

Get stuff done with apps. 100+ partners that surface actions from apps. Order an Uber. Play music. Re-order groceries.

Now on Tap

10:31am

Where you are, when you need it. Coming in Android M.

Long press the Home button, Google Now surfaces contextual information without leaving the app you’re looking at.

Viber getting demoed. Shows Google Now picking out two relevant pieces of information and providing actions based on those bits of info. NLP very good to pick out the dry cleaning reminder.

Google Now was able to correct mis-pronounciations based on what’s on the screen. This has been an issue, but the context helps the system correct the issue.

We need to provide actions for Now hooks to take advantage of.

Photos

10:38am

Machine learning. Trying to solve the issue of scrolling and scrolling to find what you’re looking for.

Google Photos

Launched for the 5th time? Looks like the old Photos.

Home

Home for all your photos and videos. To help organize and bring moments to life. Make it easy to share and save what matters.

Home for your photos. Auto-backup. Synced to Drive (instead of G+). Pinch across months/years. Looks a bit like iOS’s iPhoto (or whatever) feature. Swipe for collections. Seems very gesture heavy.

Organize

View people places and things. Sorted for you, privately. They’re Tweeting. G+ not very high up on the list.

For people, they’re able to look from the time his 5 year old was a baby, and they’re all categorized correctly. That’s impressive.

Search is also very impressive.

Actions

Editing, but also being able to easily put together stories, etc.

Photos Assistant. Auto-awesome v2. GoPro footage looks terrible.

Gesture for pressing and dragging to select similar to how desktops do it. “Get a link”, lets you create an album for anyone to consume without logging in. Allows you to add album to your library as the recipient.

Unlimited Free Storage

High quality up to 16MP photos, 1080p video.

Launching today! Android, iOS, and Web.

http://photos.google.com

Emerging Markets

10:51am

8 of 10 new phones shipped are Android. (1.2B+ expected to ship next year, 80% of that is 960M.)

Translate

Intended as a fundamental service to help people communicate. For the next billion people coming online, mobile first.

Android One

Available in 7 countries. Dual Sim, replaceable battery, built-in radio. Running latest version of Android.

Chromebook

Targeting emerging markets. Under $150 for low end devices, that provide a high quality experience.

Core apps

Fast, useful, relevant.

Access to “good” information can be transformative.

Connectivity challenges, data costs.

Light search results page shown in countries that typically have slow connections. Optimized web pages: 4x faster, 80% fewer bytes, 80MB reduction in memory usage.

Network quality estimator

Adapts webpage quality to current connection. Offline in Chrome on Android. Able to save pages for later.

YouTube offline

Save videos for up to 48hours.

Maps

Mapmaker? Local results improvements.

Transit coming to new areas.

Offline maps! Search with auto-complete, reviews, hours, and basic information. Navigation offline. Coming later this year.

Check out “Konga” (Africa’s Alibaba).

Cross-Platform Development

11:08am

  • Identity
  • Location
  • Cloud
  • Analytics
  • Engagement
  • Monetization

Develop

Android Studio 1.2, with full support for C/C++. Available on Canary.

Polymer 1.0. Lots of common elements as stock pieces.

iOS CocoaPods as the default distribution channel for Google libraries.

Testing - Cloud Test Lab. Leverages acquisition of Appurify. Coming ot Google Developer Play Console. Upload apk (with tests?), get back report and video.

Firebase used by 190k apps.

Engage

App Indexing, integrate app content into Google Search results, and allows uers to install from search results. Free.

Cloud messaging (GCM), adding iOS, and Topic subscriptions.

Mobile web - OS level notifications from websites. Add bookmark to homescreen.

App install ads. Universal app campaigns. In Developer Console in a few months.

Measure Install Ads, now both for Android and iOS. Cross-network with lifetime value attribution. Open, transparent, reliable.

Google Play Developer Console - adding views to the funnel, so you can see views -> installs -> …

A/B test Google Play listings. Includes app icon.

New Developer Pages, coherant company view.

Earn

AdMob integrated Analytics.

AdMob mediation, allows ads from 40 other networks (including Tencent?!?) to run through AdMob ads.

http://developers.google.com

Google Play

11:20am

  • 50B installs in past 12 months
  • 1B active users

Games

Lots of interest in games on Android.

Personalization

Personalized Store, 2x more likely to get app installs.

Search

Group results by category. E.g. shopping -> fashion, coupons, …

Families

Family discovery experience, the Family Star. Content ratings.

Family section of store. Browse content by age. Browse by popular characters.

Ad supported or in-app-purchases are labeled.

Udacity

11:25am

Android Nanodegree. 6 month course, $200/mo.

Cardboard

11:26am

Ecosystem of manufacturers, hundreds of apps. 1 million cardboard viewers.

What’s next

Cardboard and VR.

New viewer. Fits more phones, up to 6 inches. Physical cardboard button, fewer steps. Free cardboard!

Cardboard SDK

Supports Android and iOS

VR in the classroom

11:31am

Expeditions.

Synchronized from teacher to students. Allow classrooms to take a field trip in minutes.

Jump

Capturing 360 VR Video.

  • Camera Geometry
  • Assembler
  • Player

GoPro will build and sell Jump ready rig.

Stitching is impressive, trying to create true VR video, that understands objects, and allows more movement within video. When you move, it demonstrates the depth.

YouTube will support Jump this summer using Cardboard. YouTube currently supports non-stereoscopic 360 content.

Moonshots

11:42am

Moonshots are at the heart of Google.

Driverless cars

3200 deaths due to auto accidents. Self-driving cars have not caused a single accident thus far in the thousands of hours of trials.

Loon

Wants to bring the next billion users online. 100+ days in the air (beating NASA’s old record of 50 days), LTE (10mbps) speeds, 500m accuracy, 4x coverage area. Local partners.